


Let He Who Is Without Sin

by Balder12



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Crowley is Good at Being a Demon (Good Omens), M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Pre-Arrangement (Good Omens), They don't part on good terms, black death, medieval era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 10:49:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24968488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Balder12/pseuds/Balder12
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley cross paths on an assignment in the aftermath of the Black Death.  They discuss their place in human history, and come to a new Arrangement.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14
Collections: Good Omens Kink Meme





	Let He Who Is Without Sin

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](https://good-omens-kink.dreamwidth.org/3161.html?thread=3015769#cmt3015769) on the kink meme, asking for Aziraphale and Crowley to face a justified guilt trip about their relationship to humanity. 
> 
> In book canon the Arrangement begins well before the start of the Black Death, but show canon didn't give a date, so I've made it post-Black Death for purposes of this story.

The little Italian village bustled with so much activity that, if a visitor ignored the mass grave on the outskirts of town, he could almost forget how recently the Black Death had passed through it. Crowley preferred to spend his time in proper cities, but Beelzebub had a fixation on priests that he’d never understood, and she’d decided that Crowley should come here all the way from Venice to lay a temptation on whatever poor bastard was in charge of the parish. 

Crowley lurked around the margins of the churchyard until said bastard finally came outside, and sat down on the unconsecrated steps to watch the sunset. Crowley strolled up to him with a bright smile and an open bottle of wine, and introduced himself as a gentleman passing through on his travels. The priest turned out to be a friendly lad who couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. He was happy to share the wine, and eager to hear stories of where Crowley had been and what he’d seen.

Crowley was winding up to his standard temptation speech – he was proud of it, it included the phrase “live deliciously,” which had caused Aziraphale to make an entertainingly horrified face the first time he’d heard it – when he was blasted off the steps by a searing ray of holy light as a radiant, winged figure manifested before them. 

“ _Be not afraid_ ,” announced a voice resonant with divine power. “ _For the Almighty hath sent me to show thee Heaven’s grace, and –_ _Oh, good lord, Crowley, is that you_?”

“Too bright, too bright!” Crowley yelped from where he was cowering on the ground. “Turn the blessed thing off!”

The holy light snapped out of existence. Crowley raised his head tentatively to see Aziraphale standing over him in his more usual form, dressed in a cream brocade kirtle that would have been the height of fashion fifty years ago. Without the benefit of holy light his wings looked a bit dusty, and in need of a good grooming. He tucked them sheepishly back into nonexistence.

Crowley got to his feet, dusting himself off more vigorously than necessary while Aziraphale hovered around him, trying not to look worried. 

“I got an assignment for a standard divine vision,” Aziraphale said. “Priest doubting his calling, you know the sort of thing. What on earth are you doing here?”

“I got an assignment for a standard infernal temptation,” Crowley sighed. “This,” he said, waving his hand in a gesture meant to include the whole ridiculous situation, “is why I keep saying we need an Arrangement. No reason we both had to ride out to the arse-end of nowhere to play silly buggers with the same human. All we ever do on assignments is cancel each other out. And make our own lives harder.” He rubbed his eyes behind his glasses. He felt like he’d stared too long into the sun.

“Are you really an angel?” asked a small voice from the direction of the church steps. “And that’s a demon?” They both wheeled around to find the priest still sitting where they’d left him, his eyes as big as saucers. Crowley had forgotten the assignment was listening. 

“Oh dear,” said Aziraphale in the tone of a man who’d been caught skiving off work. “Erm, yes, yes, and I was just about to smite him, obviously!” He pointed his finger at Crowley with a dramatic flourish. “Be gone, foul fiend, before I strike you down with my flaming sword!” 

Crowley folded his arms. “No. You don’t even have a flaming sword anymore.”

“Flee now, demon, before you taste the terrible wrath of my . . .” Aziraphale appeared have run out of dialogue. “. . . Wrathfulness,” he concluded awkwardly. He raised his eyebrows in a not-at-all subtle entreaty for Crowley to play along.

“I’m not taking a dive for you, Angel. Why should I? I’m behind on my quota.” Besides, he’d ridden a horse all day just to get to this miserable village, and he still felt mildly scorched from his brush with holy light. He was in no mood to do favors. “Of course, if we’d made some sort of Arrangement to handle these situations, I’d be much more obliging.”

“I don’t understand this,” said the priest, gazing back and forth between them in horror. “Are the two of you _friends_?”

“No!” exclaimed Aziraphale, at the same time that Crowley muttered, “It’s complicated.”

The priest buried his face in his hands, and groaned. “I prayed for God’s help, and this is what I received. This terrible joke? A game? Silence would have been better.” The sun had gone down, and the young man looked terribly small in the spreading shadows of evening, hunched over on the church steps. For the first time since he’d arrived Crowley allowed himself to truly look at the human in front of him. The pain radiated off him in waves. When Crowley caught Aziraphale’s eye, he knew they’d both felt it. They stood together in silence and watched the object of their assignments start to cry.

Aziraphale stepped forward and sat down carefully on the step next to the priest. “I’m afraid I made a bit of a pig’s ear of the divine vision, but I am an angel, and I do want to help you.” He shot Crowley a look that held the genuine warning his previous threats had lacked. Crowley slunk further into the dark. He wasn’t inclined to bicker anymore, anyway. Frankly, he wanted to sink into the earth, or at least sneak off and have a drink. He enjoyed encouraging humans into colorful acts of self-destruction, but he didn’t have much stomach to watch their suffering.

The priest drew back from Aziraphale slightly, as if afraid of him. Well, obviously. Crowley could have told Aziraphale that’s what happens when you show up with your brights on. It was why Crowley preferred pretending to be human whenever he could, at least once he’d gotten the glasses. Metaphysical terror got in the way of a sales pitch more often than it helped.

Aziraphale didn’t pull back, but he didn’t push either. He just sat and waited until the priest began to speak. “My family is dead. My friends are dead. There weren’t enough healthy young men left to plant crops, and now there’s not enough of a harvest to last the winter. The children are already hungry, and half of them don’t have parents to feed them, even if there were food to give. People keep telling me that God provides. Does He? When will He start?”

Aziraphale hesitated, seemed to hunt for a satisfying answer. “God does provide, but not always in the ways we expect. Sometimes what God provides us is patience, and the strength to go on when it feels like we can’t.”

“I don’t need patience,” the priest snapped, “I need a bag of gold.”

Aziraphale pressed a finger to his temple like he felt the beginnings of a headache. Crowley knew from lengthy personal experience that this wasn’t a line of questioning Aziraphale enjoyed. “I’m afraid God doesn’t usually work like that.”

“Why not? God works like that for the bishops He put in charge of the Church. The cost of their vestments would feed the whole town.” He looked down. “So would your own clothes, come to that. Why them, why you, and not me?”

It’s ineffable,” Crowley offered softly, but not entirely kindly, from his place in the shadows, when the silence had dragged on unbearably long. 

The priest looked up startled, as if he’d forgotten Crowley was there. Crowley realized they were alone together. Aziraphale had disappeared from his place on the steps. Translocation did occasionally come in handy, Crowley supposed, for getting out of difficult conversations.

“Um,” said Crowley, less than pleased to be dropped suddenly into a difficult conversation himself. “So, about my whole plan to tempt you into eternal damnation, I hope you know it was nothing personal. You seem like you’ve had a tough go of it. I feel like a bit of a wanker right now, frankly. Lots of worse people I could be making trouble for.” 

The priest just stared at him, apparently baffled to be on the receiving end of a deeply uncomfortable apology from an agent of Satan. “Right, best of luck on your whole dark night of the soul thing,” Crowley concluded, and translocated himself straight to the nearest tavern. 

* * *

He wasn’t surprised to find that Aziraphale was already there, sitting in the chair nearest the fire, drinking from a goblet with the regular, mechanical gestures of someone committed to getting drunk and not enjoying it. 

“Thought I might find you here,” Crowley said as he took the chair next to him. He miracled up a glass and filled it from the bottle on the small table between them. He flicked his tongue at the wine once before he changed it to something drinkable he’d had in the south of France a few years back. 

“What did you do during the plague?” Aziraphale asked, staring into his goblet. 

“Me?” Crowley felt a flicker of irritation. “I didn’t spread it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Aziraphale glanced up at him. “No, I didn’t imagine you would.” Which was news to Crowley. He felt like Aziraphale had tried to blame him for every natural disaster and human wickedness since Cain had taken it personally that God rejected his rutabagas. 

“But what did you do?” Aziraphale asked again.

“Hung around in an abandoned palazzo in Venice, mostly. Drank a lot. Waited for it to end.” 

Crowley had stopped going outside altogether by the time the streets were stacked with corpses. He’d spent most of his time in the wine cellar, away from the stench and the sound of crying. By the second year he’d begun to worry that it was the Flood all over again, or even the Apocalypse come early. It seemed entirely possible, given his experience with his management, that Hell had fielded the Antichrist and forgotten to mention it to him. He’d finally sent a message down to Beelzebub taking credit for several invented acts of chaos, and politely asking what in Heaven the plague was meant to accomplish. He’d gotten her response three months later, emblazoned in fire across the broken mirror in the entrance hall of the palazzo. It was a single infernal symbol, which could best be translated, under modern human typographical conventions, as a shrug emoji.

“I went with a Florentine nobleman and a small group of his friends to his estate in the country,” Aziraphale said. “He had the most remarkable library. Heaven didn’t care. I was helping to keep up the spirits of my mortal companions, and the plague was all part of the divine plan.” 

“Smart of you,” Crowley said. He wasn’t quite sure what Aziraphale was getting at. “If I’d known you were living so nearby I’d have tried to crash the party.”

“I should have stayed in Florence.” Aziraphale wouldn’t look up. “It’s not as if I get sick. I could have helped. So many people died alone. At the very least, I could have been with some of them at the end.” Crowley supposed he was right, although he couldn’t imagine the idea would even have occurred to another angel without an order from on high. 

“So could you,” Aziraphale went on. “You were right there, in the middle of Venice, you could have helped people if you’d wanted.”

Crowley winced. That was also true. True, but not fair. “I’m a demon. It’s not my job to give aid and comfort to humanity. That’s on your lot.”

“That’s never been what you said before.” There was bitterness in Aziraphale’s voice now. “How long have you been telling me we’re not so different, that good and evil are just names for sides? Do you believe that, or is it just what you say when you want something from me?”

Crowley believed completely that he was Aziraphale’s equal, wronged by God and misjudged by Heaven. He simultaneously believed he was unforgivable, and actively working to bring about the end of the world. He tried as much as possible never to let those ideas come into direct conflict with each other. He certainly didn’t want to sort them out in front of Aziraphale, especially not Aziraphale in his current mood.

“Let’s not do this right now, yeah?” Crowley reached across the table and refilled Aziraphale’s glass. “Tomorrow we’ll head out of here, and everything will look better.”

Aziraphale accepted the refill, but wasn’t mollified. “It’s like the Flood,” he went on. “’Oh, you can’t kill kids,’ you said. Didn’t do a bloody thing to help them, though, did you? Just sat up there on Mount Ararat sulking while they drowned.”

That one stung. “Didn’t see you rescuing any kids either,” he fired back. “I seem to remember that you were there sulking right next to me, drinking up my wine.” Crowley had been heartbroken at the time, and furious with God, but it hadn’t even occurred to him to intervene. Work duties aside, he mostly thought of himself as a spectator to human history. 

“No, I didn’t, and you reminded me of it every time I saw you for centuries afterward, didn’t you? Every chance you got it was, ‘Oh look, a rain-bow!’” He said that last in a fluttery sing-song that seemed to be an imitation of Crowley imitating Aziraphale, although Crowley felt certain he’d never in his life spoken to Aziraphale with the raw nastiness Aziraphale’s tone suggested. He just hadn’t known what an open sore of guilt he’d been jabbing his finger into.

Crowley rubbed his hand across his face. “I never blamed you for . . . bless it, I was angry at God, Angel, not at you.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “God’s reasons are ineffable. But we could do more to help them. We just don’t want to.” Crowley didn’t know what to say to that. Given the choice between going out into a plague-ridden city to watch humans die in agony, and staying inside and drinking, he was always going to stay inside and drink. Maybe that wasn’t what a good person would do, but he’d never been under any illusions in that regard. 

Aziraphale finished another glass of wine, and straightened his spine. When he spoke again, he’d strained his voice into a bright, business-like tone that was meant to convey he was quite done with the previous line of conversation. “I’ve been thinking about what you said today, about making an Arrangement. Staying out of each other’s way, lending a hand when needed. It really is terribly silly that both of us came all this way for the same human, isn’t it? And silly for me to think I could be –“ he seemed to cast about for the right word, “ _compromised_ by the occasional exchange of information and duties. Given everything. We might as well make our lives easier, if ease is what we want.” 

Crowley’s mouth opened and closed again, struck dumb with shock. He’d been delicately nudging Aziraphale toward this conclusion since the sixth century. He hadn’t expected to suddenly experience the culmination of his work here, tonight, in some random Italian village, immediately after Aziraphale had reminded him of all the dead children he was apparently responsible for. He simply wasn’t prepared for this degree of whiplash.

“If you’re still agreeable?” Aziraphale added when Crowley didn’t immediately respond.

“Agreeable, yes, yes, that’s me, loads of agreeability here!” Crowley struggled to remember what it was he’d planned to do if he ever actually got this far. “Right, I’ve got a place in Bologna where we can go and hammer out the details. Right by the university, absolute infestation of legal scholars to consult. We can lay in some wine and nibbles, and start drafting.” It was everything Aziraphale liked in one big package: food and drink, universities, scholars, highly technical documents, and arguing with Crowley. They’d have a reason to stay together for days, maybe weeks. Writing a contract with a demon tended to run into complications. They’d had a hard evening, but Crowley could put Aziraphale back in sorts, if only he could get him away from this place.

“I hardly think all that will be necessary,” Aziraphale said flatly. “We can take it as it comes, surely? I was on my way to England when I got this assignment. Don’t see any good in dawdling. Thought I might move along tonight.”

“Tonight? But what –“ He just managed to cut himself off before he asked, ‘What’s the point then?’ Half the reason Crowley wanted to work with Aziraphale was as an excuse to spend time with him. Apparently Aziraphale didn’t see it the same way. “But what about your assignment?” Crowley managed to amend. “You haven’t even finished it properly.”

“Well, if we have an Arrangement, then it stands to reason that when our assignments overlap we must decide which of us will claim victory. You can have this one, and I’ll take the next. I wasn’t having much luck with him, anyway.” Aziraphale gave a little laugh that didn’t sound at all amused. “Besides, you’re behind on your quota.”

“Bugger my quota!” Crowley snarled, no longer able to hide his disappointment.

“You shouldn’t take that attitude with Beelzebub looking over your shoulder.” Aziraphale’s ‘reasonable’ voice was starting to fray at the edges. “Claim the victory or don’t. I’m going to England.” He stood up from his chair, but then stopped, and watched Crowley’s face for a long moment. He looked tired, and old in a way that an eternal being should never be. “Perhaps after all you’re right about the other thing, too. In some ways, we’re very much alike.” 

Crowley had waited centuries to hear those words – some part of him had been waiting since the wall of Eden – but he’d never imagined hearing them in that tone, like it was the saddest thing that Aziraphale knew. He’d walked out of the tavern before Crowley thought of anything to say about it.

* * *

It was 2am when Crowley appeared in the priest’s bedroom, but the man was wide awake, sitting on the straw mattress that was his only furniture. He flinched when he saw Crowley standing in the doorway.

“Don’t worry, I’m not here to hurt you, Father -” Crowley realized he didn’t know the priest’s name. Not that it mattered. “In fact, I’m here to give you a gift. Because of you, I got something today that I’ve wanted for a very long time. It only seemed fair to return the favor.”

Crowley tossed a bag of gold onto the mattress. The priest recoiled from it like it was the snake that Crowley currently wasn’t.

“Pulled it straight from the hoard of a rich man in another country. He’ll never miss it, and if he does he’ll never track it back to you.”

“What happened to the angel?” The priest asked warily. 

“He said I could have you.” It was mean, although Crowley wasn’t sure to whom. The priest barely seemed to hear it. He was staring at the gold. “You didn’t want an angel, so now you don’t have one. Just a mediocre demon and a bag of stolen money.”

“If you want my soul . . .” The priest began.

“No, no quid pro quo required. Contracts is a different department. Besides, I said it was a gift.”

“What am I supposed to do with it?” the priest asked, hand hovering like he was afraid to touch it.

“Whatever you want. It’s yours now.” Crowley held his arms out in a gesture of invitation. “But,” he continued after a beat, “the way I see it, you have three choices.” He held up a finger. “One, you reject the temptation. Refuse to receive stolen goods from a demon. Go throw the money in the lake, and have faith that God will provide for you better than the devil has.”

“Two” – Crowley ticked off another finger – “you spend the money on the people you’re so worried about. There’s enough there to feed and clothe everybody in the village this winter and the next. Maybe even the one after that. Of course,” here Crowley smiled slightly, “that’s essentially renouncing your faith. And in a few years, when the money runs out, you’ll be right back to watching children starve. The poor are always with us, as a friend of mine once said.”

The priest rubbed his face. “Or?” he said.

“Or.” Crowley ticked off a third finger. “I can’t give you enough money to feed every hungry child forever. Not even a demon has that sort of power. But there _is_ enough there to let one man live comfortably for the rest of his life. You could leave this place behind, change your name, and be whoever you wanted. See cities you’ve only dreamed of. Read books that aren’t the Bible. Wear fine clothes, sleep on linen sheets, and eat white bread with butter. Ever had cinnamon and cloves? They’re doing great things with them in Venice. You could live as well as the bishops who haven’t helped you.” Crowley shrugged. “Or not. Like I said, it’s entirely your choice.” He could feel the priest’s desire for what he’d been offered roiling beneath the surface, but really, he hadn’t needed to use his occult powers for this temptation. The priest only wanted what anyone in his position would want. 

The priest picked up one of the gold coins and turned it over in his hand. “Why is this happening to me, of all people?”

“Because I feel bad about what’s happened to your village and I can pass off this act of charity as a temptation. Or, because I’m behind on my quota and my eons of experience as a demon make me pretty sure this will break you. Believe whichever makes you feel better about what you decide to do.” Crowley wasn’t sure himself which answer was more true. Was this kindness pretending to be spite, or spite pretending to be kindness? Mostly he’d just been driven do _something_ after Aziraphale walked out. He felt like he was making a point, but he had no idea what that point was, and Aziraphale would almost certainly never know about it, anyway. 

“If you’re a mediocre demon,” the priest said, his eyes still fixed on the coin, “I never want to meet one who’s talented.”

Crowley’s smile had a few too many teeth. “You really don’t.” He turned to go, but then remembered. “Oh, like I said before, best of luck on your whole dark night of the soul thing.”

Back on what passed for the street, Crowley hunted for a horse docile enough that it wouldn’t discorporate him when he stole it. He was ready to ride anywhere that wasn’t this town, as long as it promised enough trouble to keep him away from England.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [here](https://balder12.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr.


End file.
